Local & Regional Events

Local Events
June 22: Cleveland C#/VB.Net User Group Meeting (http://www.clevelanddotnet.info/)
June 23: Cleveland SharePoint User Group Meeting (http://www.sharepointcleveland.org/)
June 24: Cleveland IT Martini (http://www.itmartini.com/)
July 16: Cleveland Give Camp (http://www.clevelandgivecamp.org/)
July 24: TechNic 2010 (Heidi Hooper - Heidi@BoundlessFlight.com)

Regional Events
June 26: SQL Saturday-Columbus (www.sqlsaturday.com/42/schedule.aspx)
June 25-26: CodeStock (http://www.codestock.org/)
August 5-7: DevLink (http://www.devlink.net/)

Toughest Developer Puzzle Ever

So you think you're a hot shot developer able to resolve every problem that comes your way. Put your skills to the test by visiting www.toughestdeveloperpuzzleever.com. The site offers 100 levels of varying difficutly. To maneuver through the levels, you have to examine the page for cllues that will allow you to go to the next levels. Some pages have a hidden link, others require you change the URL manually, etc.

The site is scheduled to launch on May 31 and offers great prizes for the first 100 people to complete it, with excpetionally great prizes for the first 5! Put your thinking caps and visit www.toughestdeveloperpuzzleever.com!

T3CHn!c 2010 - Bringing the Northeast Ohio Technical Community Together

The 2nd annual TechNic will build on the camaraderie of the boundless IT community of Northeast Ohio with the support of companies and organizations by providing a free event for attendees to simply enjoy a summer day of classic picnic fun and activities.

Last year’s event brought together over 200 attendees and 20 supporting companies from around the globe! Pictures of last year's event can be seen here.

We hope that your organization becomes a part of T3CHn!c TM 2010. Feel free to include your friends, family, employees, customers, clients, partners, prospects, and their friends and families, too!

Logos of supporting organizations will be displayed on all announcements. Consistent mention and messaging on behalf of supporters will be made through social media and other public relations, with a higher level of promotion for top sponsors. Banners and other means of visibility will be displayed at the event.

Suggested donation guidelines:
$200 +.....................................T3CHn!c TM 2010 Sponsorship
$75....................................... Table Rental for Service / Product Demo
$100...................................... Keg
$50....................................... Food & Beverages
$Peerless................................. Prizes, Entertainment
$Priceless................................ Swag, Volunteers

July 24th, 2010, 11am – 8pm (Rain or shine!)
St. Sava’s Picnic Grove
2300 W Ridgewood
Parma OH 44134

For more information, contact:
Heidi Hooper
216-469-1163
Heidi@BoundlessFlight.com
Twitter: @Heidi1163

Regional .Net Events

Listed below are upcoming regional events relating to .Net



April 17: Pittsburgh Code Camp (http://codecamppgh.com/default.aspx)



April 20: Cleveland WPF User Group –RIA Services by Chris Woodruff (http://www.clevelandwpf.info/)



April 27: Cleveland C#/VB.Net User Group - Architecture tools in Visual Studio 2010 by Cameron Skinner (Microsoft) (http://www.clevelanddotnet.info/)



April 28: Cleveland SharePoint User Group (http://www.sharepointcleveland.com/default.aspx)



May 1: Ann Arbor Day of .Net (http://www.dayofdotnet.org/AnnArbor/Spring2010/default.aspx)



May 1: Chicago Code Camp (http://chicagocodecamp.com/)



May 7: Stir Trek (http://www.stirtrek.com/)



June 25-26: Code Stock (http://www.codestock.org/)



June 26: Columbus SQL Saturday (http://www.sqlsaturday.com/42/eventhome.aspx)



August 5-7: DevLink (http://devlink.net/)

Special October Meeting

Stephen Toub from the Parallel Computing Platform team at Microsoft will be presenting at the Cleveland C#/VB.Net User Group on Thursday, October 29, 2009. Please note this meeting date is in addition to, not replacing, our regularly scheduled meeting every 4th Tuesday (October 27, 2009).

He will be travelling through our district the last week of October. He will be speaking at corporations during the day, and user groups in the evening. Stephen's goal is to get direct feedback from developers on the products he works on. Your questions and feedback help make .NET better!

Stephen will discuss concurrency and how .NET 4.0 simplifies parallel programming. This is one of the exciting things about .NET 4.0. With Moore’s Law breaking down, software developers need to be able to master multithreading and know how to develop concurrent applications. Historically, this has been very difficult. It’s hard to understand concurrency issues, hard to write good code, and hard to debug when race conditions and such do happen. With .NET 4.0, there are APIs and tools to make parallel programming much simpler.

If you would like to attend this special meeting, please send an e-mail to sam@clevelanddotnet.info with "RSVP" in the subject line.

Typemock Webinar

Typemock is holding a free live webinar (web-seminar) on how to unit test successfully. The webinar will include the following:

· Creating Supporting environment
· Unit testing tools of the trade
· Practices and Pitfalls
· Writing the first test
· Live Q & A

You can get more details on - http://blog.typemock.com/2009/09/unit-testing-net-successfully-live-free.html

Windows Client Feature Comparison

Microsoft released a chart highlighting the features of Windows 7, Vista SP1, and Windows Xp SP3. It lists features in 5 categories:

File organization and Search
Remote Access
Security and Compliance
Management
Deployment

To download the comparison chart, go to http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=FA0177CC-7E82-4993-B0D6-FEC84216DD9C&displaylang=en \

Cleveland TECHnic

On Saturday, June 20, 2009, several local technology vendors and user groups will collaborate on hosting a summer picnic, called "TECHnic". The event is scheduled from 10AM-8PM at St. Sava's Picnic Grove in Parma, OH. For more information, please visit www.tinyurl.com/TECHnicPicnic.

CodeStock 2009

CodeStock 2009 is a conference for software developers held in Knoxville, TN. The event is aimed at providing the latest and greatest topics in software development across various platforms. In addition, the event also has "open spaces" where fellow developers can gather and discuss any topic on their mind at the moment. This could range from advantages of C# vs. VB.Net to the pros/cons of Agile development to surviving a tough economic period.

This year's event will be held June 26 - June 27, providing a variety of topics for 2 full days. The full list of sessions is available at http://codestock.org/Sessions.aspx with the exact scheduling due out soon. Tickets for the event are $25 if purchased before June 1st, and $45 afterwards.

For members of the Cleveland C#/VB.Net User Group, 2 tickets have been provided free of charge to the first 2 people to respond to this blog. To claim your ticket, simply send an e-mail to sam@clevelanddotnet.info. If you're interested in car-pooling to the event from Cleveland, OH, please send an e-mail to the same address.

For more information on CodeStock, please visit http://codestock.org

Set the identity specification on a primary key

Q: I always used databases provided by Microsoft to practice on. Today I tried to create my own and ran into trouble. Problem is that I cannot set the identity specification on a primary key. The column properties show up as no and I cannot change it to yes. I’m using SQL Server Express 2005 on a Vista machine. Any thoughts?

A: . To change column properties, you must modify the table (right click table and select “Modify”). Select and highlight the column you want to change, then expand the “Identity Specification” in the “Column Properties” pane. Change the “Is Identity” property to “Yes”. Please note the change must be made to the “Is Identity” property, not the “Identity Specification”.

IT Events Sponsored by Sogeti

The Cleveland office of Sogeti USA will be hosting the following IT events in April.

April 21: Taking the cost out if IT
Time: 2:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Location: Microsoft Office 6050 Oak Tree Blvd. Independence, OH 44131
Agenda:
> Introductions Microsoft and Sogeti
> Taking the Cost out of IT
> Break
> Optimizing Microsoft Solution Delivery
> Testimonials
> Open Forum
To register, go to http://www.clicktoattend.com/ then enter Event Code: 137141


April 30: "Me the Media - Rise of the Conversation Society"
Date: Thursday, April 30, 2009
Time: 6:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Location: Beacon Place (lower level conference room), 6055 Rockside Woods Blvd. Independence, OH 44131
The speaker at this event will be Erik van Ommeren,who is managing the US branch of the Sogeti InternationalResearch Institute for New Technology. He is an author andpublic speaker on topics such as innovation, collaboration,service oriented architecture, crowdsourcing and new media. You’re invited!
RSVP by 4/27/09 to sue.fellner@us.sogeti.com

April 2009 .Net Events

Listed below are .Net related events for April 2009:

April 9: Ann Arbor Cloud Camp (http://bit.ly/a2cc)
April 9: Ohio North SQL Server User Group - Executive Dashboards using SharePoint 2007 (http://www.bennettadelson.com/seat.aspx?sig=sql&ID=141)

April 14: .Net User Group - Silverlight 3.0 Beta (http://www.bennettadelson.com/seat.aspx?sig=net&ID=145)

April 28: Cleveland C#/VB.Net User Group - IronRuby (http://www.clevelanddotnet.info/)

April 30: ArcReady (www.arcready.com)
April 30: MSDN Unleashed (http://www.msdnevents.com/unleashed)
April 30: TechNet Unleashed (http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032410537&Culture=en-US)
April 30: Cleveland Architecture SIG.

Scripting Q&A

Q: How can I automate the FTP process so it runs on scheduler without user intervention?
A: The FTP.EXE (File Transfer Protocol) command line utility comes standard with the Windows Operating system. Because it's a command line utility, it allows for many options to be entered at run time (simply enter FTP /? at the command prompt for a complete list). When using the -s:filename switch allows for the commands to be read from the filename specified. For example, first create a text file called myFTP.prm with the following commands:

open www.myftpsite.com
myUserID
myPassword
prompt off
binary
mput myfile*.txt

From a command line, execute FTP -s:myFTP.prm. Please note there's no specific extension for file containing the FTP commands. For more info on this, please visit http://support.microsoft.com/kb/96269


Q: How can I execute a command line utility from with a VB Script?
A: The CMD.EXE is a command line utility used for running other command line applications. Typing cmd /? will reveal a variety of command line options for executing the command shell. Listed below is a sample VB script for doing this:

Option Explicit
Dim return, objShell
Set objShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
return = objShell.Run("cmd /C DIR > DirLog.txt", , True)

After saving these commands into a .vbs file, they can be executed by running "cscript myFile.vbs". Please note the file extension must be .vbs.


Q: Using a VBS script, how can I access registry keys?
A: Listed below is a sample script for accessing registry keys.

Set SysVarReg = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
value = SysVarReg.RegRead ("HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\Windows Presentation Foundation\Hosting\Hosts\v3.0")
WScript.Echo value

After saving these commands into a .vbs file, they can be executed by running "cscript myFile.vbs". Please note the file extension must be .vbs.

Another useful example of scripting is to query all the processes running on the current machine and output them to the console.

strComputer = "."
Set objServices = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\CIMV2")
Set objProcessSet = objServices.ExecQuery("SELECT Name FROM Win32_Process",,48)

For Each Process in objProcessSet
WScript.Echo Process.Name
Next

For more information on scripting, visit Microsoft's Scripting Center at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/default.mspx